Ring Me in Sky Circles
by Bloodredfirefly
Summary: 'Loss has changed me, but my future has remade me and my past is but shadows to me now' - Annie, on one dark night, when she abandons her slippers and her crows and stops watching from her window. Winner of the 'The Hunger Awards' December One-Shot.


Ring Me in Sky Circles

It was just a crow in the dark sky, silent as the leaves on a still, still day. But there is something to be said for beauty being in the eye of the beholder, and fear being in the web of the mind.

I hear them screaming and screaming and screaming as the crow flies by.

I know they aren't real, never were real, but so much of their suffering was. And maybe they never recorded the agony of my screams; maybe they never implanted it in a mutt and played it in Finn's games. But I can still feel the chocking in my throat, the cutting off of my windpipe, the blood running down the side of my face. It all happened.

They just kept it quiet, silent, when it did.

And the little girl with blonde plats and more courage than fight may never have opened her innocent heart and begged for mercy – but that did not stop her needing it. It doesn't stop the ache of lack of food or the stab of bitter poverty or the emptiness of loss, echoing through your skin and to your bones. Maybe her death was painless. But it was still death, in the end.

And then the crow that I watch and listen to from my bedroom window disappears from sight, and I feel the remorse, the suffering of hating it. There was something missing from me before, like I was a mess of lines and blurs and they'd all been crumbling and pulling and shifting, no centre, no gravity. But now I'm realigned, pulled in, organised, structured, rebuilt. I have a light to guide me, a strength to hold on to.

The weakest, most vulnerable little thing I've ever held in my arms is the life raft I cling to as the storm rages through me. Even in the worst of nightmares, I still hold on in some way, and I never lose my hold. But in my time of broken waves and blank stares at white washed walls, I had very little in the perilous night.

A faded memory of a chipped grey seashell, as ordinary and common as could be, as beautiful as it was plentiful. A toothy grin from an old lady as she sold me something green and strong smelling, a herb like coriander but one I was ecstatic to have hold of. The stroke of a tanned, calloused hand against my cheek, the sunlight blinding me when I rose on a metal plate to enter the arena, the rain pouring down and the cool of the water as it wrapped me up and breathed to me '_home'._

An old sock, far too small for me, but still in the draw because I couldn't throw it out separated from its pair. The laughter of children as the ocean plays chase with their pitter-pattering feet. The stroke of a hairbrush in my dark, rippling hair, the impatience of soup boiling when you're hungry. The warmth of a kiss, the ice of a death, and the burn of a cut from mending lines.

And somewhere in there, a crow dancing on the wind, and the screams from my voice and its rough, shining beak proving to me a man's love, his courage, his faith, his loyalty. Somewhere in there, in the maze of circles with no beginnings and holes in things that never were, I managed to understand that when he couldn't take my pain when he could take his own, it meant love. A feeling, not just an action. An emotion, a rattling, stirring thing in my void world. Like a window opening in an empty room and a hundred little bees flying in, flying round, buzzing around, making noise, making sense, making a dawn of hope.

Finnick Odair was always my saving grace, my guardian angel. Till he brought to me my son, I thought he was everything. And then I held Jord Katniss Odair in my arms and understood, finally understood, that the thing that had bowed my husband like a branch to the floor was beautiful and powerful and I was crowned with it, and my son would be too.

I turn from the window and shut the curtains. In the nights when the winds and rain turned the world to blazing hell – both mentally and physically – Finn would hold me and tell me to keep walking on. So I find my slippers, my Capitol slippers and walk to the room of my son.

I knock, because he's twelve now and wants _respect_ and _privacy_, and he doesn't want me checking there's no monsters under the bed any more. But I know he still loves me, needs me as I need him, so when I hear nothing through the wooden door, I peek through to see his sleeping face. He's as handsome as his father but without Finns build, without the muscles made from the labour of growing up too fast. Instead he has my slight but strong build, only a thin hold to life but an iron one, an unshakable one.

I don't disturb the quiet of his sleep as I tread back through my house. When I first came out of the games, I never took my slippers off. I always wore them. I thought that as long as my feet did not touch the ground I couldn't be harmed. I was invincible in flight. They were shining, invisible shield of protection, gained from walking on the rays of sunlight given off from the thin fabric and rubber called slippers. When I went back to the Capitol as a prisoner, they had the cruelty to make sure my slippers came with me, to taunt me with them. They never realised what a comfort they were.

As I reach my door, I take them off, one foot down, then another. I rejoice in the feel of hard wood under my feet, my toes. I lob the breaking, scraps of material into my gloomy drive, whistling through the wind, landing vaguely near the bin. I smile into the soft dark. I turn away from the past and welcome the dawn with my arms spread open like crow wings.

**A/N: Okay, so that didn't come out as planned…. It was supposed to be Katniss/Gale and I really don't know where the bird came from…. But, what else is one to do when they're supposed to be doing homework?**

**This was written for 'The Hunger Awards', a forum by ****skittlesgirl99****. It looks awesome, and I think they really deserve some credit for keeping going so persistently. If you want to check it out (and win an award to put on your profile) then **_**zoom**_**, that is the direction I suggest you go:). **


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